John Postgate (microbiologist)

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For the English classicist, see John Percival Postgate. For the surgeon, see John Postgate (food safety campaigner).

John Postgate
In his laboratory
Born
John Raymond Postgate

(1922-06-24)24 June 1922
London, England
Died22 October 2014(2014-10-22) (aged 92)
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
Known forMicrobes and Man (1969)[6]
SpouseMary Stewart (d. 2008)[3]
Children3
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisAspects of the metabolism of micro-organisms (1952)

John Raymond Postgate (24 June 1922 – 22 October 2014),

Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Nitrogen Fixation from 1963 until he retired, by then its Director, in 1987. In 2011, he was described as a "father figure of British microbiology".[9][10]

His admired

microbes in human culture, Microbes and Man
, first published in 1969, remains in print.

Education and early life

John Raymond Postgate was born on 24 June 1922,[3][12] as the elder son of the writer Raymond Postgate and Daisy Postgate, née Lansbury, private secretary to her father George Lansbury, the politician who was Labour Party Leader of the Opposition 1932-35. He had one brother, Oliver Postgate, later a well-known animator and producer for British television. Several other members of the Postgate family were notable in a variety of fields. His cousin is the actress Angela Lansbury.

He attended kindergarten and primary private schools in

Kingsbury County School; he was evacuated to Devon at the start of World War II. In 1941 he was awarded an exhibition scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford
, where he achieved a first class degree in Chemistry. He had also taken a special
enzymology
.

Career and research

In 1948, Postgate obtained a Research Fellowship at the Chemical Research Laboratory (CRL) in

hydrogen sulphide. They are difficult to culture and to separate from other soil bacteria in the laboratory, but Butlin's group had isolated a few pure strains. Postgate managed to culture large populations of the organism and his experience of competition informed his first paper, in which he showed that selenates are powerful competitive inhibitors of sulphate reduction.[16] He went on to obtain biochemical evidence on how they consume sulphates and carbon sources,[17][18] but his most influential finding was cytochrome C3.,[19][20] a discovery that has been described as "seminal".[10] Cytochromes are iron-containing proteins found in the cells of all air-breathing creatures from bacteria and plants to humans; they were known to be part of the aerobic respiratory apparatus and were widely understood to be absent from anaerobes. The appearance of a cytochrome, one which had an unusually large amount of iron, in a strict anaerobe conflicted with current theory. However soon it became accepted and the concept emerged of "anaerobic respiration", based on reducing nitrate, carbonate or similar oxygen-containing minerals. Postgate's research formed the basis of worldwide research on these bacteria and their cytochromes, as well as the discovery of many new genera; sulphate reducers are now known to constitute a diverse biosphere of their own.[21]

Postgate also enjoyed the Group's more practical problems. His laboratory strain reduced sulphates at hitherto unheard-of rates, and their speed revived a wartime possibility of using them to manufacture

sulphur for industry by fermenting waste with sulphate. This would mimic the way in which most of the world's native sulphur was deposited over geological time. A post-war World sulphur shortage was damaging post-war British industry, so he and Butlin were sent to Cyrenaica to sample a sulphur spring and check specimens for even better performance.[22]
The trip caught the attention of the press, and the microbiological production of sulphur became Butlin's pet project, with Postgate advising.

Postgate enjoyed the practical side and also made advances in understanding the

sulphur and the treatment of chemical effluents; it also took over the National Collection of Industrial Bacteria. He was absorbed into its staff in 1950 as Senior Scientific Officer and promoted Principal Scientific Officer in 1952.[23]
In 1959, for controversial reasons, Butlin's group was disbanded and its staff and collection redeployed.

Postgate was released to take a post at the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE), part of the

necrophagy) in the persistence of bacterial populations in ancient isolated environments such as salt inclusions or fossils.[24] He was promoted Senior Principal Scientific Officer in 1961. In 1962 he was given leave to take up a Visiting Professorship of Microbiology at the University of Illinois, in the United States, to finish off some earlier research on sulphate-reducing bacteria and undertake some teaching duties. He returned to MRE in early 1963.[20]

A change of emphasis in the research remit of MRE led to his resignation and in 1963 he was Appointed Assistant Director of the

Agricultural Research Council's newly formed multidisciplinary Unit of Nitrogen Fixation (UNF), with the chemist Professor Joseph Chatt FRS as Director. Postgate's job was to plan and direct its biological research programme.[25] The Unit settled at the University of Sussex
in late 1964, and in 1965 the University appointed Postgate Professor of Microbiology in addition to his UNF position, with only postgraduate teaching duties.

The Unit's biological research was restricted to free-living nitrogen fixers, chosen as more amenable material for its research than those requiring a plant symbiosis. Its approach ranged from biochemical enzymology to microbial physiology and general microbiology, and in due course it introduced the genetics, and was genuinely collaborative, with everyone, including Postgate, working at the bench. Almost all its research publications were multi-authored and Postgate's name appeared only on those original papers to which he had actively contributed - though he prescribed and oversaw all his staff's research directions. Outstanding papers were: a series deducing mode of action of nitrogenase, the enzyme responsible for the initial attack of nitrogen, which is an oxygen-sensitive complex of two proteins, iron and molybdenum, which requires energy in the form of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to function and which releases hydrogen from water while fixing nitrogen;[26] the elucidation of oxygen-screening processes in an oxygen-tolerant species of nitrogen fixer and the discovery in that microbe of a second nitrogenase containing vanadium in place of molybdenum alongside the regular one;[27] the elucidation of a cluster of some 21 genes which code for the whole nitrogen-fixing system, the creation of mobile genetic elements carrying that cluster and the transfer therewith of the ability to fix nitrogen to wholly new bacteria by genetic manipulation.[28][29] One of the Unit's plasmids came into worldwide use to study the genetics of nitrogen fixation. The Unit's reputation prospered as a world centre for basic research on the subject.[30]

Postgate had spent March 1977-March 1978 as Visiting Professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University, U.S.A.. He became Director of the UNF when Chatt retired in 1980 and in turn Postgate retired in 1987. The UNF was later absorbed by the John Innes Centre at Norwich.[31]

Publications

Postgate wrote over 200 research papers,[7] some 30 'popular' articles in less specialised publications, over 50 book reviews and edited books on nitrogen fixation and microbial survival. He wrote four specialist books among which his monograph on sulphate-reducing bacteria[32] stimulated worldwide research on this genus. His admired popular science books Microbes and Man,[6][11] and The Outer Reaches Of Life,[33][34] were influential and widely translated. Microbes and Man was first published by Penguin Books in 1969, and remains in print in its 4th edition (Cambridge University Press, 2000).[35]

He wrote book reviews and other pieces for left-leaning periodicals in the early 1940s. Later he wrote many more general and sometimes controversial articles on subjects such as the population explosion,

Rationalist Press Association
in 1995.

His writings on family biography include three articles on his father

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
.

Books

  • A Plain Man's Guide To Jazz[37]
  • Nitrogen Fixation[5]
  • The Sulphate-reducing Bacteria[38]
  • Microbes and Man[6]
  • The Outer Reaches of Life[33]
  • A Stomach for Dissent; The Life of Raymond Postgate, 1896-1971[39]
  • Lethal Lozenges and Tainted Tea: A Biography of John Postgate, 1820-1881[40]
  • Microbes, Music and Me: A life in Science[41]

Awards and honours

Postgate was elected a

Society for General Microbiology since 1966, he became President 1984-7 and Hon. Member 1988.[43][44]

He served on the editorial board of the

Journal of General Microbiology from 1960, becoming Editor in Chief 1970-74 and served on the Editorial Boards of the Royal Society's Notes and Records and Science and Public Affairs, also that of Geomicrobiology Journal.[45]

He obtained a Doctor of Science (D.Sc) (Oxon) in 1965; he was awarded Honorary D.Sc. by the University of Bath in 1990, and Hon. Ll.D. by the University of Dundee, 1997. The Society for Applied Bacteriology made him an Hon. member in 1981.[46] His nomination for the Royal Society reads:

Postgate has initiated some, and advanced many, areas of microbiology. He published the first serious biochemical studies of the sulphate-reducing bacteria and discovered cytochrome c-3 (the first cytochrome to be discovered in an anaerobe and the first low-potential cytochrome). He was the first to describe several new types of micro-organisms and has rationalized their manipulation and classification. His studies of the death of vegetative bacteria from starvation and cold have greatly enriched our understanding, as have his demonstrations of population effects, cryptic growth, substrate-accelerated death and 'moribund' steady states, in continuous cultures. Postgate also discovered protection by detergents from freezing damage. His recent studies of nitrogen fixation provided the first evidence for the direct involvement of metals; he has made major contributions by his purification of the nitrogenase of K. pneumoniae, by his demonstrations of oxygen exclusion mechanisms in Azotobacter, and by his recent success in transferring genes that specify nitrogen fixation from K. pneumoniae to E. coli.[1]

Personal life

In 1948, he left Oxford and married Mary Stewart, a graduate in English from St Hilda's College, Oxford; they had three daughters, Selina Anne, Lucy Belinda and Joanna Mary.[47] His wife Mary died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008, having become known for her reviews of spoken word recordings.[48]

Postgate was self-taught and never able to read music, but he led the Oxford University Dixieland Bandits on cornet from 1943-8, then played with Eric Conroy's Jazzmen, 1950–51, and then on irregular gigs. He enjoyed jazz music throughout his life[2] and led Sussex Trugs (the University of Sussex staff jazz band which at one time included three Professors) 1965-87, then became a sideman until Trugs disbanded in 1999. He played fortnightly at Chiddingly, East Sussex for over twenty years, gaining a decent following, and also with local informal groups. After the 1970s he doubled occasionally on soprano saxophone. His youthful playing may be heard on one commercial CD, Oxford Jazz Through The Years, 1926-1963 (Raymer Sound, 2002).[49]

Postgate wrote numerous articles, record reviews and book reviews on jazz for specialist jazz journals such as Jazz Monthly and Jazz Journal. He served on Gramophone's panel of jazz record reviewers for some 24 years. His early guide to jazz, A Plain Man's Guide To Jazz [50] filled a need at its time but is now obsolete. With Bob Weir he wrote a bio-discography of the Jazz trumpeter Frankie Newton.[51]

Postgate was a member of the

food adulteration.[52]

References

  1. ^ a b c "EC/1977/28: Postgate, John Raymond". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 10 May 2017.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1098/rsbm.2016.0006
    .
  3. ^ a b c "POSTGATE, Prof. John Raymond". Who's Who. Vol. 2014 (online edition via Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^
    JSTOR 55746
  5. ^
    ISBN 0521640474
  6. ^
    ISBN 0521665795
  7. ^ a b John Postgate's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  8. ^ Cambridge University Press, author biography
  9. doi:10.1099/mic.0.059048-0; PDF
    (subscription required)
  10. ^
    PMID 22493300
    .
  11. ^
    ISSN 0262-4079. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help
    )
  12. ^ "Birthday's today". The Telegraph. 24 June 2013. Archived from the original on 24 June 2013. Retrieved 23 June 2014. Prof John Postgate, microbiologist, 91
  13. ^ Postgate, John Raymond (1952). Aspects of the metabolism of micro-organisms (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford.
  14. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 90-93
  15. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51771
  16. S2CID 4099359
    .
  17. PMID 14908011
    .
  18. ^ Grossman & Postgate (1955) "The metabolism of malate and certain other compounds by Desulfovibrio desulfuricans" ibid, 12:429-445
  19. ^ Postgate (1956) "Cytochrome c3 and desulfoviridin; pigments of the anaerobe Desulfovibrio desulfuricans" J. Gen. Microbiol. 14:545-571;
  20. ^ a b Postgate (2013), pp. 427-429
  21. ISBN 0-387-97865-8
  22. ^ Butlin & Postgate (1954) "The microbiological formation of sulphur in Cyrenaican lakes". From Biology of Deserts (J.L. Cloudsley–Thompson, ed.) Inst. Biol., London, pp. 112–122.
  23. ^ Postgate (2013), p. 121, 138
  24. PMID 13985691
    .
  25. JSTOR 531866
  26. doi:10.1098/rstb.1987.0052
    .
  27. doi:10.1098/rstb.1987.0054
  28. JSTOR 2396532
  29. doi:10.1098/rstb.1987.0059
  30. ^ Nutman (1987) Centenary Lecture. ibid. 317: 69-106
  31. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 430-431
  32. ISBN 0521257913
  33. ^
    ISBN 0521558735
  34. ^ review from the Mednansky Institute Library
  35. JSTOR 4443007; edition history from 4th edition
  36. ISBN 1610391519
    , 9781610391511
  37. ISBN 9780900994050
  38. ISBN 0521257913
  39. ISBN 1853310840
  40. ISBN 1858581788
  41. ISBN 9781861511003
  42. ^ "John R. Postgate". EMBO. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  43. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 480;
  44. ^ Society for General Microbiology Archived 11 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine, "Past Presidents"
  45. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 491
  46. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 490
  47. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 319
  48. ^ "Mary Postgate"; Obituary, The Times 7 February 2008
  49. ^ Postgate (2013), pp. 118
  50. ^ 1973, Hanover Books, no ISBN
  51. ISBN 978-0-9509341-1-2
  52. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34470
    .

External links
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